I visited Peach Guitars this morning, what an excellent store. I tried out some Gibson Custom Shop guitars and in particular a couple of 60th Anniversary 1959 LP Stds. I was very underwhelmed with the sound from the pickups. They sound extremely bright and harsh lacking the warm mid range I would expect.
I owned a 2016 R9 for 3 years so know what I was expecting the Custom Buckers to sound like but the new guitars sound quite different. I also tried a used 2014 R9 which sounded much more like I was expecting.
I also tried a '61 Custom Shop SG Std, which the specs say are the same Custom Buckers, Alnico III (now un-potted), as are fitted to the 60th Anniversary LPs and it sounded much warmer with more mid range punch that the Les Pauls, it was the best sounding guitar of the ones I tried.
I also tried a 2018 R7 with the narrow tall frets, which were OK, a bit like 6105s that fender use, and that sounded harsh too.
The new 60th anniversary R9s all look a bit orange too, and appeared to have little red in the tops.
Interesting...it's put me right off the new R9s.
Comments
Nice playing Chris and that is a fair representation of the sound, although through a Friedman I was struggling to get the top end under as much control as you have in the demo. You can definitely hear that they are spankier and a bit thinner sounding that LPs of the past.
As as the one in your demo, they are a bit too orange for my taste!
It's the best magnet for me
I have the 59 tributes from ‘14 & they’re all over them ( and I thought the tributes were a little bit thin sounding).
With that said, they would be great for pedal board use as they are so neutral sounding.
The tone I associate with an original 'burst, among other examples, is the live tone that Jimmy Page gets on How The West Was Won album, yes, it has brightness but there's a thick mid range and roundness to the tone on the lower strings. I thought the Burst Buckers were pretty close when they were introduced in 2013, and really liked them in the 2016 R8 I had, although the bridge could be a bit spiky, which was hard to dial out sometimes. These new pickups seem to accentuate that glassiness.
Are these new Burst Bucker pickups the same pickups but now just unpotted? Is that more historically accurate?